Britain’s Allan McNish lines-up his hybrid diesel Audi in third place for the Fuji Six Hours tomorrow (SUN).

The Scotsman’s co-driver Tom Kristensen set a personal fastest time of 1min 28.370secs to average 115.51mph around the 2.84-mile Japanese Mount Fuji track near Tokyo in today’s (SAT) 20-minute qualifying session.

McNish and Kristensen start the Fuji Six Hours 13.5-points behind Audi Sport team-mates Marcel Fässler (CH)/André Lotterer (D)/Benoît Tréluyer (F), driving a similar Audi R18 e-tron quattro, who are placed second (1:27.639) on the 27-car grid but with the Anglo-Danish duo knowing they must finish ahead to keep alive their title hopes.

“Tom and I need to win the race in terms of the championship and we’ll be flat out to achieve that,” confirmed McNish.

“TK unfortunately didn’t have the cleanest of runs in qualifying but he put us third on the grid so everything is to play for.”

The race, which sees the Toyota (Wurz/Lapierre/Nakajima) in pole-position (1:27.499) begins at 0300* on Sunday (14 Oct).

Allan continued: “We’ve worked hard to try to improve the balance of the car specifically for the race since Wednesday because the circuit is quite technically demanding and you need to have a consistent and stable car which I think we have achieved.”